The Best Practices in Automating Your Warehouse Operations

If you are looking at little automation in your warehouse this is the best practice to lookout. If you are automating your warehouse in terms of conveyors or sorters or even robots it would make a lot of sense to mark your SKUs as conveyable or not conveyable, sortable or non-sortable and as the robots coming everywhere robotable or non-robotable. The last thing you want to do is make a small product or a big…

The Zone Picking Best Practice to Improve Order Picking Productivity

This next best practice is about the warehouse zone picking process. The way this works is if your picking involves going to multiple areas, multiple isles of bin locations, and you are picking from different bin locations. This process is about eliminating all the unnecessary walking, and of course we all know the more you pick, the more you can ship, the more you ship, the more you invoice, the more you can get paid….

Living in the Shadow of Amazon: Learn the Lessons

Photo courtesy: Amazon Amazon is the elephant in the room where any supply chain conversation is happening. Everyone is chasing that Amazon effect. Everyone is trying to figure out how to deliver on the expectations of customers that Amazon and its business models have created. Retrofitting Amazon’s strategies or tactics for another business is tough. In terms of order volume and order profile, Amazon is its own kind of beast. At the same time, it makes…

Threat of Robot Warehouse Invasion Overblown

In 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva Robots to use in the warehouse. During a couple of recent trade shows and conferences, I heard some intriguing presentations on how robots taking over warehouse worker jobs. By many accounts, venture capitalists are flocking to fund these companies. Naturally, I wanted to get a reality check from real end users and decision makers. I wanted to know, if they had decided to move to robotics, about the return on…

Bots May be the Next Big Supply Chain Invasion

I ran into a bot for the very first time back in the year 2000. These computer programs ideally automate tasks normally handled by humans. For me, the bot streamlined a shopping task. At the time, it blew my mind. I was heading out on a business trip to the Netherlands, and I wanted to capture the trip in pictures with a new camera. My job was to support the roll-out of a warehouse management…